MIRRORCITY
explores the effect the digital revolution has had on our
experiences. London is one of the worlds centres for contemporary art.
MIRRORCITY shows recent work and new commissions by key emerging and
established artists working in the capital today, who seek to address
the challenges, conditions and consequences of living in a digital age.

JG
Ballard believed that reality had already exceeded the visions conjured
by science fiction by the end of the 20th century. Drawing on the
digital era we now live in, the artists in MIRRORCITY respond to and
address this new perception of the world.

Artists have always
created alternative realities but recently they have been exploring
where the digital and the physical space crossover and fold into each
other. The exhibition considers questions specific to our time such as: How can we navigate the space between the digital and the physical?
and What is the effect of advanced technologies on our lives?

The
engagement, innovation and complexity of the works selected for
MIRRORCITY also directly or indirectly reflect the multi-faceted
character of London itself.

A specially
produced alternative newspaper has been created by Tom McCarthy for
MIRRORCITY. The project was conceived as a collaboration between the
author and the artists featured in the exhibition. Artists have
contributed a diverse and distinctive array of texts and pictures that
McCarthy has edited into an otherworldly reading experience.

waterside contemporary is pleased to present The Unreliable Narrator, an exhibition of new installation and video works by Karen Mirza and Brad Butler developed especially for the gallery.

You are the Prime Minister, a prominent neon work in the window of the gallery becomes an empowering invitation to take up the title role in a fantasy fiction. It is soon revealed to be misleading: the statement belongs to a larger piece from a scholarship exam for thirteen years-old boys entering Eton College, an elite school that trained 19 of the Britains Prime Ministers and 12 members of the current Government.

A video installation Terror Tapes narrates the 2008 Mumbai attacks, alternately from a position of the terrorists and of a seemingly impartial commentator. The video sourced from CCTV recordings of the siege, together with telephone conversations between the attackers and their controllers, suggest that the event was performed for the benefit of news cameras: this is just a trailer, the main feature is yet to come.

In the exhibition, Mirza and Butler expose the existence of an Unreliable Narrator who takes advantage of the gap between fiction and reality. We may imagine that in the street and at the gallery alike, we are tacitly comfortable with our own classic roles as actors and audiences. Making visible the self-propagating assemblies of circumstances, references and implications, the artists force a reconsideration of the mandate and power of the narrator, whether he, she or it is explicitly identified or merely implicit.

And so, in the Prime Ministers Question, the thirteen year-old candidate is required to argue for the necessary and moral use of military force against civilian protesters, at his command. In Mumbai, the terrorists play into the hands of Bollywood filmmakers, who rush to register epic film titles even before the siege is lifted.

Stories slip between construction, rhetoric and reality with implausible ease: language itself appears to create and propagate the conditions of authority, violence, and division. As the Narrator continues to hijack the rhetoric of cultural and political discourse to rupture, Mirza and Butler expose the absurd ventriloquist act.

Are you an artist with a foot in activism, a community organizer, or a small business owner?Are you someone who questions the status quo?Are you interested in uncovering structures of power and exclusion?Are you the exception and the rule?

This fall, the Museum of Arts and Design has commissioned London-based artists Karen Mirza and Brad Butler to present The Museum of Non Participation: The Guest of a Citation an installment of the artists fictional museum and ongoing body of work that confronts (non) participation and the socio-political in art works, in conjunction with Cheat Out to the Audience: Risk & Reward 2013. For this presentation of the project, Mirza and Butler are inviting local residents to workshop and stage one of Bertolt Brechts short learning plays The Exception and the Rule. The rule implies a legal language or a directive, while the exception evokes being ungovernable or searching for an alternative to either the state or the free market. Together, they act as both a statement, that the rule cannot exist without the exception, and a question, as to what a state of exception might be. Through the story of a merchant and his servant, The Exception and the Rule explores themes of capitalism and economics, labor and hierarchy, legislation and state ideology, hiding and secrecy, and the lack of union rights. The artists invite you to eat, talk, rehearse, and perform together in order to explore and enact how these themes play out in our daily lives, as well as to consider how these can be extended to the audience as active participants.

The Exception and the Rule is one of Brechts several Lehrstucke or teaching plays. Brecht himself translated the term as learning play intended to educate people primarily about socialist politics. Typically, this form of political theater privileges function above content and foregrounds collective teaching and learning through various modes of performance. It attempts to break down any division between author and audience through reflexive gestures that reveal the mechanics of theater. Through this and other plays, Brecht developed a way for non actors to learn through playing roles, adopting postures, getting rid of the divide between actors and audience, and focusing on process rather than a final project.

Working in the same vein, Mirza and Butler encourage you to enter into the project with the spirit of mutual enrichment and collaboration, where personal experiences/expertise and collective interpretation ultimately converge in the public presentation of the play.

Tuesday November, 19 7pm: Public presentation of The Exception and the Rule We ask that applicants commit to being present for all sessions, your regular participation is essential for the group to work as a whole.

Apply Now!To participate in the workshops and restaging of the play, please send:- a brief biography- a short 250 word description of your interest in the projectto public.programs@madmuseum.org by October 15, 2013.

Applications are free and open to anyone, however registration will be limited to 10 individuals.Hospitality and a small stipend will be offered to the selected participants.

The Museum of Non Participation is a fictional museum by London-based artists Karen Mirza and Brad Butler. For the duo, the term non participation is a useful device for questioning and challenging current conditions of political involvement and resistance. How does one participate in or withdraw from political realities individually and collectively? What social spaces support or deter such actions? And how can art represent, facilitate, or intervene this process? Made up of film, sound, text, and performed actions, The Museum of Non Participation serves as the conceptual platform from which to address these questions.

For the US debut of this ongoing project, Mirza and Butler transform the Walkers Medtronic Gallery into a multilayered installation and evolving social space that interrogates the shifting allegiances, contracts, and new deals between nation states and their citizens. A selection of video works highlights the precarious nature of this relationship as witnessed through significant geopolitical events, from the Lawyers Movement protests in Pakistan to the Arab Spring and widespread austerity rallies in Europe.

Incorporated as a central feature of the exhibition, a live production set serves as the backdrop for the artists and members of the Twin Cites community to workshop, rehearse, and stage one of Bertolt Brechts short learning plays The Exception and the Rule, a tale of corruption, exploitation, and injustice.

A program of informal public conversations and commissioned texts for the Walkers website further animate the exhibition.